Tips for finding a job

This web page does not provide answers to all questions;

it is a website of my reflection, summary of learning from my dear colleagues and friends.



Why employers need you?

  • Passion: a career we really want and we find meaning in it, most likely not because of money.
  • Experience and knowledge
  • Skill set (depending on job description):
    • Methods, tools (software, hardware) , processes, etc
    • Teamwork: collaborative, working in a team, self motivated
    • Communication skills : oral and written
    • Analytical thinking skills
    • Creative problem-solving
    • Leadership, etc
  • Working hard and smart
  • Personality



Common failure reasons

  • No residency or work right visa
  • Lack of direct relevant experience
  • Skill set is not right
  • Lack of confidence in phone or face to face interview
  • Culturally difficult to be in sync with the team
  • Missing key words in resume, because HR people may not be familiar with technical terms which imply the key areas/features of job description

Possible ways to improve

  • Expand and maintain network
  • Improve resume
  • Utilise resources
  • Understand the difference between job and career
  • Discover self and seek what really interest self
  • Read some inspiring and life changing books, and practice (Homepage of this website)
  • Think of playing chess; stand in other's shoes:
    • Do we know what we are really interested in, good at (or potentially good at)?
    • Do we know what our target industry or companies are?
      • Are we prepared to take more risk, uncertainty, challenge or entrepreneurship?
      • Or, are we looking for real certainty for work, life and family?
    • Do we know what our target industry or companies expect?
    • How can we prepare for our dream career?
    • What qualification, skillsets, experiences the dream industry need?

More reflection, experience and lessons are in the following sections.

Tips for writing resume

  • Each resume should be written explicitly and specifically matching each job description
  • For each section, think about description of
    • Evidence to support you are the match to the job opening, such as
      • Achievements, rewards or contribution to company, community and society
        • For example, describing project duties, exceptional contribution, with evidence to support the claim, e.g. saving project $$$, customer satisfaction %%%.
      • Good academic results to show that you studied hard (potentially hard worker)
      • Leaders in university organisations to show leadership
    • Key responsibilities for job histories


Resources for finding a job


What is the difference between a job and a career?

What do you think?

Engineering graduates often have two career pathways:

Professional engineer career

or Engineering academic career



  • Actually, there are many other options, e.g. governments, government supporting organisations, industry research institutes, NGO, start-up, or others.
  • In the western world, full time academic career often requires a PhD as prerequisite, then experience in research, teaching and leadership,
  • The below comparison for the two career pathways is generally true for most of fields, not only for engineering.

Successful people probably have chosen a career of their interest.

So, they would have the passion (hard work + love) to strive to reach their success.

Professional career

Pros:

  1. Focus on a few jobs, tasks,at a period of time
  2. Often engineers can complete milestones and celebrate small successes along the way
  3. Often project scope, budget and timeline are largely predictable (surely there are mistakes, delay and uncertainties)
  4. Time slots are more likely to be well organised
  5. Industry may have better pay
  6. May well develop knowledge and skills in various relevant disciplines


Cons:

  1. may have time sheets to fill in for every hour of work (every dollar counts for project management)
  2. may have economic cycles. In mining boom, many companies urgently need new people and in mining bust, redundancies happen a lot (people lose jobs or need relocate)

Academic career

Two types:

  • Teaching and research, e.g. lecturers and professors
    • can be both rewarding (realise new ideas and enlighten brilliant minds)
    • and chaotic, due to teaching duties (often urgent) and research projects (this can be more important)
  • Research only, e.g. post-doc researchers, research fellowship
    • Contract based, risk, uncertainty and need continuously seek new contract
    • Better to broaden the area of seeking employment to the whole Australia, or the world


Pros

  • Enlightening people
  • Realise new ideas and communicate these ideas, results and impact

Cons

  • Constant failures and rejection in funding application and paper publication
  • Begging for money: increasing pressure in funding application
  • Highly uncertain for what the next new ideas may be and when the new ideas may come out (they are foundation for funding application and academic papers)


Credit and gratitude to

QUT: Prof. Gerard Ledwich, Dr. Wendy Miller, A/Prof. Geoffrey Walker, Prof. Wageeh Boles, Prof. Jillian Hamilton, Ms Michelle Fox

FERC: Dr. Jessica Bian

Senior recruitment consultant: Anthony Balsiger (on Linkedin)

HR/Executive coacher: Alison Jardie, www.leadershipevolution.com.au